I'll miss all three to varying degrees. I think Wiig is moving on to bigger and better things and general stardom. I think Sudeikis is fooling himself a little, because I think he's great on SNL and I think it's the perfect venue for him and I think his film trajectory won't be terribly dissimilar to Joe Piscopo's.

i guess it figures after last year was like the first summer in SNL history with no cast changes that this would be the biggest batch of departures since '94 or '95. Samberg is definitely ready to go, the plethora of non-musica 'digital shorts' has been pretty dire lately.

fwiw sudeikis costarred in a big (awful) hit comedy last year and is somehow at the point where is name is above the title, he's been on snl a few years, and if there was a time to strike while the iron was hot this is it. if his romney was an impersonation ppl talked about and if romney looked like he was going to win i could see an argument for him hanging around but neither's the case. samberg can still do his shorts whenever he wants, has enough of a fanbase w/ lonely island that he doesn't need the show as much as another cast member might, and he's gonna be in an adam sandler movie that will be a big hit so i can see him thinking it's time (fwiw i think i liked hot rod more than bridesmaids and definitely more than horrible bosses). i never understood really why wiig came back this year, unless it was just an issue of timing.

yeah what up with that could survive w/o will forte but no sudeikis would be a bridge too far. it would be awesome if they could get him to come in to just do that the two or three times they do it a season (seems totally doable).

Yeah, as much as I may miss any of the folks that leave, I think it'll ultimately be good to shake up the cast a bit. Six of the current cast members (including Seth Meyers) have been around for 5-10 years already.

Okay, maybe Dana Carvey, then. And yes, I know there were extenuating circumstances for his career's nosedive, but still.

Again, I feel the need to point out that I like Sudeikis a lot and wish him the best, but if he's quitting SNL to pursue a film career, I'm not sure that he fully recognizes his own strengths/weaknesses. I think he'd do really well in an ensemble sitcom cast, though.

taccone already left a couple years ago and i kinda wonder if schaffer even does much besides the digital shorts. samberg has been seemingly doing more live sketches lately but half of them are practically overtly making fun of how shitty samberg's impressions are.

Lotta consensus here. Weekend Update winds up being a high point of the show more often than not these days, thanks largely to Hader and Moynihan. Another sure-fire high point being whatever Killam's doing in a given week. His star is on the rise, for sure.

Looks like the Zooey Deschanel Show is the new sketch they're going to suck all of the laughs and charm from through endless reiteration. This one was fine, but Lorne's predictable writing is on the wall.